Enchantment of the Night
by neko-chan1
Summary: [Chains of Blood Universe] KamioxShinji pairing, along with the others that CoD wrote about. On a night where blood drenched the snow, we started on our own paths into darkness.
1. Prologue: Yoru ga Kuru!

Enchantment of the Night

Okay, dudes, here's the idea. While Prince of Tennis is property of the guy who wrote it, Cheeseburger of Doom owns the whole Chains of Blood universe. And this was written with her express permission.

Well, this is a fanfic of a fanfic, KamioxShinji pairing, though it won't get there for a loooong time. And this will not update fast. I am sure of very little in my life, but I am sure of my lazy attitude, at least.

All that said, let's start!

Prologue: Yoru ga Kuru!

A boy was busy practising tennis. He was using one of the automated ball-shooting machines made by Japanese so that people could play by themselves without having to do stupid things like smile and shake hands with mortal enemies, and it was not a very good one either. It made sputtering noises, and sometimes the balls didn't shoot in the correct place. Better players would have lauded the realism, but the boy was getting irritated. A cat sitting near the machine gave him a flat, steady look out of yellow eyes, then yawned.

_Oh well_, he shrugged. He wasn't all that great a tennis player anyway. Certainly not of the new breed of youngsters who gave their lives and souls to it, the type who had coaches who could book them the best training courts, and the machines that didn't splutter, with shiny dials to adjust speed and velocity and other things he didn't know about. He was still a rookie, a first-year, and the best he could hope for in the training was being ball-boy, and hearing his superiors laugh at his clumsiness.

The tennis court was on top of a high-rise building, surrounded on four sides by dark green wire fencing. _It's scruffy_, the lone player thought in mild disgust. _That's what it is. All the faded lines and rubber that isn't even springy anymore, full of cats at every perch, with sweet wrappers and papers everywhere._ It fit the player, actually. The youth was in a half-slouch, that made him look as tired of the world as the felines that made the tennis court their nighttime roost. He was wearing a faded sweatshirt with red letters printed across the front that gave the impression of an impressive slogan, and roughed-up sneakers with blue stripes. He looked very uncomfortable with his body, his swings and grip held an unsteady look about them, as though all he had done had been done by accident, and he blinked a lot, like a small mouse.

The machine whirred, lining up its next ball. He turned, adjusting the grip on his racket, and absentmindedly noticed that a cat had jumped onto the machine. It was sitting on top of it, with its paws in front and its hindlegs backed up against its body, directly facing him. Like most cats, it managed to make its perch look like the most comfortable place to be in, and it had an intimidating stare that made you feel like a rat without a sewer to run into. The boy was used to cats in the practice court, so he didn't pay it any heed.

The machine emitted soft whine that gradually became higher and louder, going up and up, and he knew the ball was coming. He lifted his hand to adjust his arm, as the pitch of the whine rose, and it was so high... a keening screech... it reminded him of a car accident, the squealing tires...

The cat parted its jaws delicately, exposing its wide black mouth with a pink tongue inside, and blinking its red eyes. The boy's body toppled to the ground.


	2. Chapter 1: Kage ni Nare

Chaper One: Kage ni Nare

Okay... next chapter. I was trying out a new writing style in these chapters, so bear with me okay! Oh, and the chapter names weren't translated.... Um... before that, did anyone catch the references they were of? You are probably very astute if you did..

Since I forgot, the prologue means 'A Night Comes' and this chapter kinda means 'Become a Shadow.' I hate chapter names, I never know what to write. Well.. I will try to do my best with these!

With a little growling sound that rumbled in its belly, the cat reached out a paw the size of a man's heart and batted at the corpse's head. It rolled to the side, and its jaw slackened, exposing the inside of the mouth. There was no blood, even though the blow the cat had dealt had been strong and its claws had been unsheathed, claws that had been known to tear scale and fur, to rip cloth and leather. The cat's eyes narrowed, then the growl reveberating in its throat turned into a husky purr that throbbed lowly in the still, black night.

It reached down and began to eat. It ripped off what it could of the dead youth's clothes first, tearing the sweatshirt away, forcibly removing the racket from its hand, careful not to tear the strings. First the heart, because fresh blood was good even if one was not a vampire, then the entrails, savouring the long stringy meat with its unique texture, then the other organs, the skin – caked as it was with salty sweat and grime from the street, and a layer of human scent that took years to construct out of human food and human living – last.

Always last. It was the hardest part, and he had always found he couldn't devour it rapidly, the animal hunger in him could not – would not – demand this whitish, bloated husk, any more than it could want to choke down the clothes the prey had once worn. It was too soiled, too unclean. There were years of guilt poured into it, years of denial, years of the terrible choices those who are cast out and want to make their lives meaningful again must make. To eat such filth was to imbibe dishonour and hatred, anger and pain.

But his masters, temporary though he hoped them to be, had been clear. This boy was a renegade, a castaway, and for the sin of his existence he would pay in the same coin. Just as his life had been a crime, his death, known to none, would ultimately exonerate his soul. So it was said. And he was a hunter, and very hungry. It had taken him a long time to find this prey, it had soaked the humanity into its very soul, masking its once recognizable scent.

He forced himself to bite, sinking powerful canines into the corpse. The dead flesh itself seemed to rebel against his jaws – his nose was assaulted with the odour of sweat and soil, the meat was hard and dry. He forced himself to swallow, and almost immdediately felt his stomach reject the offering. No, he had to. A clean death, they had said.

"I'll take care of it."

The panther looked up and then gave a soft growl that clicked against its throat, a cat's version of a good-natured chuckle. The dark figure moved into the light, dark robes rustling, the runes etched into the fabric glowing faintly in the harsh rays of the floursecent lamps. While definitely male, the cloth was cut to conceal, and very little of the person could be seen except basic features like the cobalt sheet of shoulder-length hair, and dark, shadowed eyes that held the certain blank quality of a person whose mind is always between one world and the next, and yet never properly in either.

The panther growled again, then there was the faint sensation of air being displaced as the cat morphed into a slender young teenager. Tawny fur gave way to pale, supple limbs corded with hidden muscle, but the eyes, red like blood spilled on a moonlit night, remained the same. They gave the silent dark figure a friendly glare, before moving forward.

"Shinji?"

Then, smirking, "You really are a sly little witch, aren't you?" He recognised the unmistakable clothes, as well as the smell of a witch, which is like no other smell of no other creature in the Underworld. Unlike the blood-smell of vampires or the stink of an eternally-rotting zombie, a witch's scent is subtle and mysterious, a thing to be savoured in some circles.

The witch moved to the dead boy's side, bending and picking up the severed head, noting with a rasied eyebrow the jagged lines of claw against its neck, and inspecting the mouth. Sure enough, there were the elongated canines, and the eyes, even dead, were red-rimmed. The boy had obviously been fighting the bloodlust before his assassin had found him and put an end to his torture. "This is remarkably fast, Kamio, even for you," he commented in his usual mild tone, looking up.

Shinji regarded the boy levelly, his face betraying nothing because there was nothing to betray. Kamio, even in human form, had the grace and the cunning of the huge cat he could become, though he was stuck at the age of sixteen and hence would always retain the awkward, slightly shy bearing of a fragile youth one step removed from adulthood. Shinji was the same, though he kept himself young using the occult arts practised by all in his family. The same but different. Where Kamio's boyish features accentuated the flash of pride and mischief in his eyes and his pale skin showed off his copper hair, Shinji's dead-to-the-world look was entirely out of place on a person his age, making him look like a being displaced, a being that did not wholly belong.

Kamio grinned. "No one can possibly match my speed," he informed the other.

Shinji nodded. He believed that. "Yes, that's true. But tomorrow, remember, we have a match with Seigaku, and since they beat us last time, we shouldn't let them beat us again, it's be so embarrassing, especially since Tachibana-san acted so confident to Tezuka, even though now Tezuka is a vampire too, which maybe makes him more dangerous, but he can't use his powers in the human world right, which makes him the same as us, but he might be able to sense your speed, so..."

"Wha?" Kamio had completely lost the thread of the one-sided conversation. He had been occupied with watching Shinji's hands move across the prone form, sketching runes and drawing lines, working deftly and quickly.

Shinji finished the last rune and stood up. "I mean, I know you use only a fraction of your real speed, but Tezuka might notice, and he shouldn't know who you are, it could be dangerous, especially considering your position.."

"Shut up already!" Kamio practically shouted. He hated it when Shinji mentioned that.

"But.."

"Look, it's going to be dawn soon, you'd better finish u.."

They were both cut off by the sound of ripping wire, and Kamio had barely time to turn around when a figure burst in through the side of the tennis court, literally burning the low-grade rubber flooring and pulling apart the green network that surrounded it. It hurled itself onto the shape-changer with all the speed and power only those from the Underworld could possibly have.

"Kamio!" Shinji didn't know if he had shouted a warning or a curse as the figure crashed into his shape-changing friend. Abstractedly, torn by the need to complere the spell and the obligation to help his comrade, he watched as the body of the young teen was enveloped by dark fur and the sharp features became twisted into the intelligent gaze of a hungry cat. The transformation leant Kamio the speed and strength required to heave his enemy away from him, but not before he been injured on the upper arms.

_The transformation is slower,_ Shinji noted. _He's been straving himself in preparation for the kill, like a tiger before it takes a well-guarded young elephant, to make his hunting instincts sharper. But now the lack of food is taking its toll, Kamio can no longer transform quickly the way he could_. But all that didn't really matter, and he moved over to the body to sketch the final rune. Dawn was coming, and he needed to complete the spell by moonlight, or the incantation would be just another set of words.

The spell, a counterpoint to his, hit him on the shoulder, numbing it with pain as he stared wonderingly at the blood that soaked through his robes. Who had been powerful enough to get a spell through his shields? He whirled around, meeting Kamio's frantic eyes as the werecat blocked another powerful slash. In his magical vision he could see the remains of a spellcasting glittering around their assailant, which meant only one thing – they were up against a vampire.

He read in Kamio's eyes the same panic. Vampires were of the upper class of the Underworld, almost all were linked by blood to Atobe-sama, and hence, they enjoyed power and status beyond all the other races. To kill one was to invite disaster, they were protected by law and tradition, by webs of political defense and deeply entrenched alliances.

But the time to think was over. Kamio's muscles flexed as he heaved the body of his assailant over, pinning it under him and plunging fully-unsheathed claws at its exposed stomach, only to be met with a barrier spell. The giant cat hissed in rage and jumped backwards, but not fast enough to escape further injuries on its torso, where the wounds began to bleed sluggishly. Scars from previous battles reopened, and the panther whined and growled in pain, eyes red with anger even as it became apparent that Kamio's body could not writhstand much more damage.

Shinji closed his eyes as he felt the unseen foe turn its tread towards him, moving heavily, speaking softly with deadly intent. "How dare you... you killed him..." it rasped. The words had a hoarse grating sound to them that made Kamio's fur bristle. He pounced again, claws digging into the enemy's back, hoping to buy his friend some time.

"Just because he wanted out... just because he wanted happiness... to be free of this stupid life..." Shinji concentrated, shutting off the distracting noises of his friend screaming in agony, the vampires accusing words filled with anger, years and years worth, a chasm of curses that filled centuries of undead life. _We have to succeed_, he thought silently, _we have to complete the mission, Kamio knows that, Kamio knows that we have to gain back what we lost on that fateful day... Even if Kamio dies he must gain it back... _

Those were the words that both knew better than their own flesh, their own blood. Thus had Kamio and him sealed their lives of their own accord, on a night when blood shone like precious rubies scattered upon the snow. Kamio and him knew that all their friendship had started there, and yet in bitter irony all their hope for it to be true had been destroyed. A death would be given, Kamio's or his, if it was the price demanded. And friendship could no longer exist with that soul-twisting knowledge.

He heard a howl from behind him even as the last rune imprinted firey lines onto the corpse, and he rolled aside just as purple flame burst like maggots from the rotting flesh to consume the whole. "Kamio.." he muttered as he saw the panther had finally overcome his prey, and was ripping bloody furrows down its back as it used all its weight to push him bodily into the burning flesh. The flames ate through the shield and it splintered into a thousand shards of ice just as Shinji realised, too late, his mistake.

The figure howled in rage and agony as flames seared his flesh, causing the skin to peel away from the delicate bones, outlining orange hair and livid blue eyes like a wolf's stare beyond the light of a campfire. The vampire's teeth were bared in a furious snarl, exposing the lengthened canines as the cloak he had been wearing fell in charred tatters to the ground.

"Sengoku!?"


End file.
